Belle Noire
by Queen Nagini
Summary: After a certain ghastly night's events, Bellatrix has time to contemplate her world, as she puts quill to parchment to write a letter to someone who no longer exists. Oneshot, Post OOTP.


**Belle Noire**

The always-pure Bellatrix Lestrange had a Black heart in more ways than one. She sat in an old moth-eaten chair as if it were a throne and drummed her fingers impatiently against the old desk, waiting for the words to come to her. The coarse stonework surrounded her portentously shutting out all the light, leaving the room dark and cold, like her mind. The single candle slowly burnt disgustingly hopeful and optimistically as if in contrast to the room and herself. Her ever wise and patient Lord had advised her to put her thoughts into writing, as an outlet for the bottled up andimpatient anger within her. For the moment she had to be careful, for the moment she was to stay inside, for the moment it felt like she was under house arrest. She lifted the quill- the small flame of a burning idea was beginning to spark into a raging fire.

Her hooded dark eyes narrowed in concentration as her long, pitch-black and unmanaged hair fell over her shoulders. She was going to write a letter. A letter to _family_. She sneered at the thought, the person she was going to write to was not worthy of being called family, and indeed he had not even grasped the simple concept of the word. Of course this was not a letter of sentimentality or of long glorious summers long since past. It was a letter of pure spite, a letter to sanctimoniously prove a point and a letter of explanation.

_Dear nobody. _She scoured the words viciously into the parchment to further prove that he _was_ and there was in fact, no body.

_This is Bellatrix Black, Bellatrix Lestrange or more privately Bella. Yet you are not worthy to identify me by any of those titles, lest you besmirch or slurry them with your dirty, flawed tongue. You may know me simply as your enemy or as your killer._

_You incompetent, reckless idiot, did you really believe that you would prevail against us? You and your pathetic band of merry fools, who are lead by someone who is not even fit enough to look after himself! Let alone your loved one the precious boy-who-barely-survived: Harry Potter. Even to write his name makes me nauseous, to know that you shared your house with bloodtraitors, mudbloods, those with tainted blood and other such pointless 'people'. _

_Was it petty rebellion or sheer stupidity? You who acted morally superior and showed me such little (although I deserved it) respect. We saw one another when you were fifteen and the next time you saw me? In Azkaban! You vowed never to " stoop as low as us." And yet you still found yourself in prison!_

_The Dark Lord knows all. He knew of your futility and that you never showed us the humility and respect we deserved. You never comprehended our plight; to purify the wizard race of all the filth, who you willingly took under your wing. It is a worthy cause, so what if sacrifices are made? What does it matter to you, or me, or the wizarding race the death of people? It is inevitable that people will cease to exist. So what if they suffer? It is nothing to me or my people, compared to our race, which is crying out in pain to be purged of it's filth._

_You demostrated this total disregard of common sense when you favoured my so-called sister. Out of Narcissa the 'princess', me the 'warrior' and Andromeda the 'peasant'; who had the disgusting guile to have a child by a muggle._

_The dark lord understands this and all. We share a kinship, a bond of utter understanding. He showed me the light. _Bellatrix scribbled the words furiously, her thin, gaunt face glowing with an obsessive, manic glee. She read over her words and laughing bitterly at the irony of the last word. She crossed it out in favour of _dark._

_I'm important and respected, and you? You're dead. We kill for sport and when we kill we feel euphoric as a buzz of power takes hold. Power is all. Power is everything, to be in control is to be indestructible. You believed power was a state of mind. Oh, how very wrong you were. Death is nothing to me, I am a goddess, I show no mercy and so I am feared! Do you know what it is to be feared? In short yes, you did and hated every minute of it. Their fear is my power, I have control, I have respect. To drive someone insane demonstrates this power, a savage, joyful emotion surges inside. I feel nothing, only power. I am not insane. I am powerful._

_You don't understand a word I'm saying, do you?_

She wrote the last words in a frenzied rush. Bellatrix, satisfied that she had proven her point eloquently and articulately leant back on the chair lazily and swunging her thin, long, pale legs overand onto the table. she pulled open a draw and inspected the contents for a plain seal and wax. She melted the red wax onto the envelope, sealing in the contents. She was fascinated by the hue and consistency of the wax she observed it fall lazily onto the parchment, mesmerised. The colour seemed dark in the lack of light and to her eyes alone it seemed like she was spilling red blood, symbolically onto flesh.

She stamped it brutally with the plain seal (it would be suspicious if she were to seal it with her own family seal, no doubt after the night's event the whole country was crawling with aurors in the vain hope they would find the murderer of Sirius Black). It was finished to her cousin, the Black dog.

In rumination she sat and watched it for a while, unmoving. Then with a fast impatient motion and a cry, she destroyed her night's work. Elsewhere dawn was streaking the horizon and her fellow deatheaters were imprisoned, no matter they would come and go but she- her lord's most faithful warrior would remain elusive.She had done it, in her crazed mind she had righteously proved her point. He was dead. For him, it was the end. But for her it wasjust the beginning.

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_Well, I hope you enjoyed that. I am unsure whether to keep this as a one-shot or to call this a prologue. Feel free to review._


End file.
